Episode 102: Aging Tantric Pornstars

Join us as we consider a pack of poems by Pier Wright, and the complexities of pacing, prosody, and narrative poems with strange and powerful images: memory, tenderness, a “magnificent young moose,” & the magic of being caught in the act. Kathleen “Gratitude” Volk Miller, champion explicator and advocate for gratitude and neuroplasticity, analyzes the “small pointy hats of hope” as lovers entwine. Jason “Gorgeous Vectors” Schneiderman loves sticky collisions. Gabby and Alex and the crew ponder happy endings and surprises that feel like “Objective correlatives,” slushies. Spoiler: Marion “Sunshine” Wrenn makes an appearance from future past, or future perfect, or…something like that. It all makes a great story.  Slushies, what is your “embarrassing at the moment but will be funny later” story?    This episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors, Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist  A.M.Mills, whose song “Spaghetti with Loretta” now opens our show.  Pier Wright attended Kalamazoo College where he was influenced by the poetry of Con Hilberry and later by that of Diane Seuss. The first poetry reading he ever attended, and has never forgotten, was Robert Bly reading from Silence In The Snowy Fields. He received a Post-Baccalaureate & Masters degree from The Art Institute of Chicago. As a student he discovered Fairfield Porter, Monet’s large Water Lilly paintings at at Musée de l'Orangerie, Terry Winters, Mary Heilmann, Philip Guston’s late paintings, Giotto, Noguchi, etc.. Influences include Prayer Wheels, Marie Howe, Chris Martin, Peter Matthiessen, Stephen Dunn, John Cage, Ornette Coleman, Joni Mitchell, Phyllida Barlow, the ceramic work of Toshiko Takaezu, and, most recently, the writings of C.D. Wright. While living as a hermit for several years at the end of a peninsula in N Michigan he began working with Michael Delp. He has been the director of Wright Gallery since 2002 and is recently married. Socials:  Instagram is pierdwright, Facebook is Pier Wright, and website is pierwright.net (paintings)     Driveway Poem   we arrived early at the house by the subshop after the bar closed it was cold and being new at love the only way we thought to keep warm was by undressing completely, with great urgency in the front seat of the Ford then my foot got stuck in the horn just as our friends began arriving we couldn’t have left even if we’d wanted to with all the cars having parked behind us so we went to the party anyway me with my shoes untied you unfolding yourself from the car like a magnificent young moose the night sky on one side of you and the stars over there the way you had of entering a room back then as though by just walking the muddy path to the stoop a lotus popped out   Gratitude   what was once impotent in me remains in this fiery house on a small lot, crap lawn every roughed grief the small pointy hats of hope red hibiscus bushes wilting in a row the heat slicked fur of a sleeping hound a house made not of things but the relationship between things such as the desire two bodies have when flying blindly toward each other at incredible speed so, when I ask if I can make you breakfast what I mean is, I am thankful you are finally here   The Hibiscus, Key West   we shared thin, raw, slices of tuna, conch salad, cracked stone crab claws, drank dark rum, tripped over the noisy chickens on our way to your room. drank more rum from plastic cups, then a table broke, the matching chair in pieces, waltzing together across worn linoleum like aging Tantric porn stars. waking to Cuban coffee, I remember eggs, while waiting for a bus to Miami you wrote your number on a napkin. I tried calling several times, a memory persistent as the fly banging on this kitchen door screen.   Mother’s Day   what a day in the garden pulling out the knotweed the clover and spurge forgiving you for leaving so soon the way they cut your head open I recall a dream I find you in a dumpster it’s hot your bones are missing and you can’t get out just now before dark beside the thistle and burdock your cheeks wet I ask if you are hungry I chop potatoes eggs olives how tender the early dandelion greens are tossed with sea salt bitter with lemon drizzled with the good oil I keep for company